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Author Topic: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?  (Read 32599 times)

ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #60 on: November 29, 2022, 04:55:35 AM »
Sorry, yes, "unambiguous" is a ridiculous bar. I'm still searching for unambiguous signs of intelligent life on earth. But for "intelligent" life, highly varying non-random radio signals would be a strong sign (i.e. the sort of thing SETI was looking for).

But that's pretty interesting

Quote
In the Archean eon (4 to 2.5 billion years ago), a disequilibrium existed via the coexistence of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, methane, and liquid water, which ordinarily would react to create ammonium and bicarbonate, quickly removing the methane from the atmosphere without the presence of life to replenish it

Now I can see how you could detect possible life without radio signals from a technologically advanced society.
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rcjordan

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #61 on: November 29, 2022, 04:08:07 PM »
AFAIK, we're searching for signs of carbon-based life.  Roddenberry once mulled over the possibility of silicone-based life forms. Everything else in Star Trek seems to have happened , so why not silicone aliens?
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littleman

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #62 on: January 21, 2023, 09:51:00 PM »
The James Webb Space Telescope: Atmospheres of Other Worlds lecture @ 8pm PST Monday.  It requires pre-registration for in person or YT viewing.
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rcjordan

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #63 on: June 06, 2023, 04:13:17 PM »
James Webb smells someone having barbecue in galaxy 12 billion light years away

Most distant smoke and smog discovery could help explain star formation in the early universe • The Register

https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/06/james_webb_aromatics/

+

"On Earth, the molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, can be found in smoke, soot, smog, engine exhaust and forest fires. "

Webb telescope detects organic molecules in distant galaxy | CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/world/webb-telescope-distant-organic-molecules-scn/index.html
« Last Edit: June 06, 2023, 07:42:07 PM by rcjordan »
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rcjordan

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #64 on: July 12, 2023, 07:24:14 PM »
James Webb telescope image dazzles on science birthday - BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66179323
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ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #65 on: July 12, 2023, 09:23:51 PM »
These pictures are gorgeous, but I always wonder how much is art and how much is science. Webb, of course, mostly isn't sensing in the visible spectrum, let alone in color, so all these stunning photos NASA releases are artist's interpretations of the data, but based on some

I have seen photos of the raw images, but was curious how available these are. There is a nice page explaining the JWST image processing and you can actually access the archive of the raw images, which are actually in FITS format. That page also has a link to download the FITS Liberator to convert to TIFF and a link to a step-by-step guide on how to download the original black and white images and colorize them yourself. I can't see doing that, but I wonder how many hobbyists are going in there and grabbing images and, in particular, I wonder how different the images are depending on who does the processing.

https://esawebb.org/about/general/image-processing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS
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ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #66 on: July 12, 2023, 09:32:40 PM »
I didn't find an article with side-by-side interpretations, but here are two quite different versions of the Eagle Nebula Pillars of Creation as captured by Hubble - different colors, different elements highlighted, though still the same orientation (as noted in one of the articles, the orientation is arbitrary and choosing to show them as pillars rather than, say, hanging tentacles, is an artistic choice too).

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050303/hubble.shtml
https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2016/09/13/hubble-false-color/

This has some nice graphics on how the Hubble images are processed. With JWST there is, of course, a lot more room for interpretation since it is almost entirely in infrared part of the spectrum.
https://hubblesite.org/contents/articles/the-meaning-of-light-and-color
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ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #67 on: September 13, 2023, 05:20:02 AM »
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littleman

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #68 on: September 13, 2023, 05:37:21 AM »
We have to stay objective, but finding a strong pointer to life outside our planet is pretty exciting.
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ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #69 on: September 14, 2023, 03:20:41 AM »
>> pointer to life

From today
https://xkcd.com/2828
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ergophobe

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Re: Anyone else excited/nervous about the upcoming James Webb Telescope launch?
« Reply #70 on: November 08, 2023, 04:48:23 PM »
And now Euclid images are coming in.

I couldn’t understand from the article whether these are natively full color or the released images have been processed to full color like Webb or Hubble images. I assume the latter.

https://www.space.com/dark-matter-euclid-mission-first-breathtaking-images
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